Robot Roundup

The interesting thing is that the pieces are all being assembled separately. We talked about the bipedal robots and the robots with human-looking faces in another blog entry. There are also researchers teaching robots how to tie a necktie. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is sponsoring a contest for robot drivers to drive on their own -- it seems one of the early holy grails is going to be autonomous driving.
In Qatar, which values camel racing, all camel racing jockeys will be robots by the year 2007, although remote-controlled robots more than autonomous ones. Still, it's not hard to imagine the remote-controls eventually being taken away -- it would make the race more exciting. Yep, it looks like the robot will replace the remote control, sometime in the distant future. Take a look a Philips new R&D device, the "Smart Companion", which is supposed to take the place of remotes in your living room. Want something? Just ask the Smart Companion and he will do it for you: music, movies, TV, all for the asking.
So where is this all going? Right now there are protoype and R&D technology being developed for a number of key humanoid robotic systems, with a number of problems already solved (like speech). Some problems, like speech recognition, are being solved by the computer industry. As these technologies come out into the market, the critical next step is to standardize interfaces and protocols around various robotic components. This would work just like USB devices in your home computer. You would buy separate robotic parts, then plug them together. They would recognize all of the pieces and automatically work together. At first, this type of work would only be done by "robot integrators", specialists who will master the details of the components. But soon, very soon thereafter, this type of do-it-yourself robot construction kit will be available for everybody. When is all this going to happen? Beats me. Give me a call in twenty years and ask again.
UPDATE: ABC News has a nice story, "The Robots Are Coming" that describes how the popularity of robots seems to be taking off everywhere. On the practical side, Forbes magazine warns that the market is still VERY early and you should only invest money you are willing to lose.